


lay yourself down on my chest

by purplefennels7



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anxiety, M/M, Major Character Injury, Original First Order Characters - Freeform, That's Not How The Force Works, made-up force workings, there's a lil bit of blood and surgery mentions if that isn't your thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-05-18 10:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14850998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/purplefennels7
Summary: But he is a Hux, and he is a General, and he will not cry. He will not feel, and he will do his duty.Only Kylo Ren, it seems, can make General Hux do stupid, impulsive things. And only Kylo Ren can make the fallout of those stupid, impulsive things even worse.or: Hux sends in troops to rescue Ren from a mission gone wrong, but Ren, being Ren, gets himself injured anyway. Hux is terrible at coping.





	1. i. i've got no choice but to follow you

**Author's Note:**

> I won't lie, this began as a deathfic because that's what I do, but then somehow I got stuck on the death. Y'all get major injuries and depression instead. And lots of Mitaka and my lieutenants because I love my seven children haha.  
> main title and most chapter title credits to _please don't go_ by stephanie rainey

The insistent chiming of his comm pulls Kylo from sleep. The bed is cold beside him, Hux having worked the night shift after the last of a series of problems with the  _ Finalizer _ ’s hyperdrive, and Kylo briefly mourns the loss of his warm cocoon of covers as he rolls over to snag the comm from the table. He mumbles a curse as the brightness of the screen burns glowing imprints onto his eyes, squinting against the light as he pulls up the message.

> _ 07:07: <<Lord Ren, the Supreme Leader requests your presence, along with that of General Hux, in the audience chamber immediately. The General has already been informed.>> _

Kylo groans and tosses his arm over his face, flopping bonelessly onto his back. Sparkles scud across his vision, and he can already feel a headache starting up. A meeting with Snoke really isn’t the way he’d wanted to start his morning. Even from trillions of klicks away Snoke’s presence is an ordeal; although he can’t touch his mind across such a distance, the very air is always hot and heavy and presses down on him almost as if Snoke is reaching out across the galaxy despite the light-years that separate them, intent on clawing deeper into the void that he’s spent years rending into Kylo’s soul. He has no idea how Snoke manages to do that; it seems to go right against the principle that distance reduces the potency of the mindtouch until at some point it stops existing altogether. Every time, though, the sensation is there, bringing bile up into Kylo’s throat and setting his hands trembling just like Hux’s do when he piles one too many cups of caf onto one too few hours of sleep.

And of course, on top of the physical sensation, there’s always the thinly veiled disappointment in his failed apprentice, the flawed tool that he’d put so much faith in and gotten back nothing but mistake after mistake, failure after failure. Mindtouch or no, after the destruction of Starkiller, after the loss of the scavenger girl, Kylo can barely manage to overcome the urge to hunch into himself, even crumple to his knees with the weight of Snoke’s disapproval. Only Hux beside him, shoulders pulled back in parade rest in the almost relaxed way that only decades of training could create, can compel him to resist.

But no sooner does he contemplate marking the message unread, going back to sleep, and claiming not to have seen it does a second message come in. 

> _ 07:08: <<Expedite.>> _

At the same time, a change seems to come over the ship, as if the shadow of Snoke’s  _ Supremacy _ is moving slowly but inexorably across the bow of the  _ Finalizer _ , and he feels more than sees the air grow darker. Kylo sits up in bed with a jolt, the last vestiges of sleep long gone. The walls of his quarters grey out, turning fuzzy at the edges and morphing into Snoke’s high-ceilinged throne room on Starkiller. Before he can stop himself he flings a hand out, extending it before him as if he’s trying to grab onto the edges of the vision and peel it away like he would a curtain. 

Instead his grasp closes onto empty air. He falls forward, unbalanced, and finds himself staring at the fabric of his bedcovers. When he looks up the illusion is gone, bland gunmetal grey walls showing no hint of the black stone that they had just been, and he could almost pretend that nothing had happened if not for his heartbeat throbbing traitorously through his entire body.

_ He’s already here. _ The realization is more inevitability than anything else. No one other than Snoke could bring up the all-too-familiar hot, acidic tang in the back of his throat and make the  _ Finalizer _ ’s artificial atmosphere suddenly bear down onto his shoulders like it weighs a thousand pounds. 

“Hells,” he says aloud. If Snoke’s here already, instead of waiting for the go-ahead from the holo crew that’s patching him through, it must be, well, something important. All he knows is that he has to hurry. Even though he and Hux had been summoned separately, he has to find him before they go face-to-face with the Supreme Leader, where even making eye contact for a millisecond could turn disastrous very quickly. And he doesn’t want to leave Hux alone with Snoke, either, no matter how much he insists that he can take care of himself. No matter how little Snoke thought of his apprentice, he thought even less of Hux, always looking at him as if he were some kind of insect to be squashed beneath his boot and brushing anything he tried to say aside as inconsequential. He picks up his comm from where it’s fallen off the bed and opens a private channel to Hux, at the same time pulling himself out of the covers and heading for the refresher to splash some water on his face. He hopes fervently that Hux sees his message before he’s admitted before Snoke.

* * *

 

“General?” Decks away, Hux holds up a hand to stop Lieutenant Caloma as he half-listens to a technician rattling off the cycle’s hyperdrive issues and types out a requisition list with his other hand. 

“No, General, this is a communique from the Supreme Leader. Time-sensitive. Sir.” That gets his attention.

“Go ahead, Lieutenant?” he says, closing out his notes and shutting off his datapad, making a mental note to fill out that requisition form later. 

“The Supreme Leader requests your presence in the audience chamber, along with that of Lord Ren, who has already been notified. Expedite proceedings,” Caloma reads off her screen. Hux tamps down the urge to sneer at  _ audience chamber _ \- really, just a room fitted with a holoproj that Snoke had insisted upon during the  _ Finalizer _ ’s construction and, after Starkiller’s death, had been commandeering more and more often to have “training sessions” with Ren, sometimes forcing even private holos to be relayed to the projectors on the bridge or in the conference rooms. Instead, he turns to the hyperdrive tech, whose eyes are flickering between Hux and Caloma like he isn’t sure if he should keep unintentionally eavesdropping on official matters.

“Apologies, Major, it appears that we must postpone this discussion. I will contact you at a later time. Unless otherwise instructed, keep engine one running at 75% capacity until we can ensure its stability.”

“Sir.” The man nods and salutes, obviously anxious to both extract himself from the conversation and return to his finicky engines. As he hurries off, Hux turns on his heel and beckons Caloma along with him. 

“Lieutenant-Colonel, you have the bridge,” he says to Atali as the first of his alpha shift officers begin to trickle in for the shift change, and the blast doors slide shut to the backdrop of his people fanning out across the bridge. Any other man would have let out a breath of relief at being spared from a double bridge shift, but Hux is far from the average officer, and in any case, he would gladly swap for a double shift instead of a meeting with Snoke. His comm chimes as they reach the end of the corridor, and he pulls it out to see a message on Ren’s private channel. He glances briefly at Caloma, who catches first his eye and then his meaning and glues her gaze to Hux’s shift schedule, open on her datapad. After all, he has no idea what Ren has deigned to send him this time.

> _ Kylo, 07:34: <<Meet me by the refreshers down the corridor from the audience chamber. I want to get a sense of what Snoke wants before we go in there.>> _

Nothing incriminating, apparently, but it reminds him exactly what he’s walking towards. Even though Ren makes no mention of it in his message, Hux instinctively knows that he’s asking, in essence, to coordinate their attack. He sends back a simple okay, but hastens his stalk a little, forcing Caloma to hurry after him.

“Lieutenant, wait for me in the main conference room on aft deck; I don’t know how long the Supreme Leader will require my presence.” She nods, but doesn’t move from his side.

“Lieutenant, now. I must confer with Lord Ren.”

“Sir.” There’s a tiny hint of a smirk at the corner of her mouth as she salutes and turns on her heel to go. Halfway down the corridor, she pauses and looks back over her shoulder.

“Sir? The Supreme Leader-”

“What about him, Lieutenant?”

“I - I just - Be careful, sir.” She’s turned back down the corridor and is out of sight by the time Hux recovers himself enough to even process her words. 

“She’s just worried.” He jumps and whips around to find Ren standing behind him, an odd expression on his face.

“Ren, you really must stop sneaking up on people like that.” Ren just smirks at him as they fall into stride next to each other, but his face drops as he remembers where they’re going. 

“You know, she had to see Snoke, well-”

“Drag me around on my own bloody bridge, call me a rabid cur, and doubt the strength of the army I’ve spent my whole career building?” Hux can’t help but let the bitterness take over for a second, the old bruises on his chest and hips letting out a phantom twinge. 

“Yeah, that. Hux, if you-”

“I’m fine, Ren,” he snaps, eyes flashing. 

“No, Hux, I - kriff, I’m still awful at this.” A second later Ren is in his head, thoughts tumbling out in a rush.  _ Hux, I don’t know what Snoke wants from us but it can’t possibly be anything good, and after Starkiller his training’s been getting a lot worse- _

_ His  _ nonsensical torture _ of you for no apparent reason, you mean, _ Hux interrupts, a familiar flare of anger rising in his chest. 

_ Hux, really, it isn’t torture, _ Ren protests, but when he flicks his gaze up to Hux’s face, he’s met with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a dismissive scoff.

_ Tell me that again when you can make it back to your quarters, on your own, without passing out after one of those so-called training sessions. I don’t pretend to understand what exactly it is that he’s doing to you, but if he’s stirring around in your  _ brain _ all I can say is that that’s asking for some serious damage right there. _

_ And now you should see why I don’t want to let you go in there alone.  _

Hux’s first instinct is to snap at him again because hells, he isn’t that  _ weak _ that he needs Ren to be looking out for him at a mere conference with his commanding officer. In any case, they’ve been klicks away from the  _ Supremacy _ for weeks upon weeks now. Snoke can’t touch them here, even though Hux can’t forget that the Supreme Leader has eyes everywhere. His frustration flares as he feels Ren’s apprehensive touch brush his mind.

_ Ren, what aren’t you telling me? _ Stars above, Hux  _ hates _ not knowing things. 

“Nothing!” Ren protests, startled enough by the query to switch back to the spoken word. Hux just levels him with an unimpressed glare. “No, really, I’m not keeping anything from you. I literally don’t know a thing about what we’re about to walk into. All I know is that Snoke is here already and he probably isn’t happy, and I have no idea why he wants both of us, which is  _ exactly why I wanted you here. _ ”

“Snoke is here already? This was what I  _ meant _ when I said you weren’t telling me something.” Hux pauses for a moment as he’s hit by a chilling realization. “And now he’s even unhappier because we’re late. Ren, what in stars’ name possessed you to wait until now to tell me this?” Something like an abbreviated fight with his emotions twists Ren’s face, and his mouth moves soundlessly for a moment before he lets out a snarl and slips back into Hux’s mind.

_ I wanted to go in with you, and yes, I know you can take care of yourself, but it’s just… You alone with Snoke makes me nervous, and I feel better if I can be in there with you. _

Despite the nagging thought of  _ weak, small, insignificant _ that rises involuntarily to latch onto Ren’s words, Hux can’t help the hint of a smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth. 

_ You’re an idiot _ , he thinks, and just when Ren’s expression starts to go stormy, he looks quickly up and down the corridor and then leans in to kiss him. 

“Ren, no, the Supreme Leader,” he manages as Ren goes to slide his gloved hands into his carefully gelled hair. Ren curses and instead cups his chin with one hand and pins him against the wall with the other, crowding carelessly into his space, and Hux lets his eyes fall closed as he leans into Ren’s touch. He shivers as Ren angles his head to deepen the kiss, and a ripple of amusement slides across the link - Ren always liked it when Hux went pliant under his hands.

But he knows that they’re still working on a schedule, and no matter how much he wants to drag Ren into a supply closet and have his way with him, they’re already late for their audience with Snoke and it would do them no good to be any later. He nudges gently at Ren, who still seems rather intent on separating Hux from his uniform, and Ren complies with a reluctant groan and a kiss to the cheek. Hux yanks off a glove and smooths his hand over the back of his head, checking that his hair is still mostly in place, and glares at Ren as a mote of satisfaction drifts into his mind. 

_ You are the worst, _ he grumbles as he tucks down the back of his uniform tunic, pulls the glove back on, and settles his greatcoat further over his shoulders. Ren just smirks and presses a chaste kiss to his lips before he pats down his own unruly hair as best he can.

“Can’t keep the Supreme Leader waiting much longer, General,” he half-teases, but the weight of the statement hangs heavy in the air between them as they walk down the rest of the corridor. 

“For luck,” Ren whispers as he places a kiss at Hux’s temple. And then the blast doors are sliding open and they’re striding side-by-side towards the holoproj, eyes trained straight ahead and boot heels clacking on the durasteel. Snoke, and whatever mission he brings, lies ahead of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come yell about Kylux (and the lieutenants) on [tumblr](https://phxsmas.tumblr.com)
> 
> comments and kudos are forever cherished


	2. ii. i know how to hold you best

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> local bitch returns from the dead bearing lots of hux being saltier than crait and snoke being terrible. no, seriously, i sat on this for three months because i couldn't figure out how to do his dialogue. couldn't abandon it though because there's things in the future that i am very excited about. and this one turned out okay too. enjoy :')

Snoke still does a fine job of looming menacingly even when confined to the few feet allotted to him by the  _ Finalizer _ ’s military-grade holoprojector, lidless eyes somehow managing to convey contempt and condescension at the same time as he stares down at Hux and Ren standing motionless before him. To Hux’s chagrin, he’d already delivered a biting comment on their tardiness— _ General, I would expect a more punctual response from my own officers, would you not? _ —and that had set Hux on edge even before he’d started outlining the mission. Combined with the sharp contrast of blue hologram on the pitch-black room, something that Hux knows Snoke, dramatic as ever, specifically requested, he can already feel the prickles of a headache starting up behind his left eye. And it only gets worse from there.

“I am sending you, along with the  _ Finalizer _ , to the Outer Rim to continue the search for information on Skywalker.” The word  _ information _ slithers dryly through Snoke’s twisted mouth, reminding Hux of the sound of some great beast’s scales sliding over stone. “Rumours have been brewing of the dregs of a resistance movement, no doubt associated with the remains of the Republic, but I have the confidence that the situation can be…” Here, a pause, as if Snoke is considering his next phrase. “Adequately handled.” Hux more feels than sees Ren wince; Ren obviously still isn’t quite used to not hiding his face behind his mask, which he’d mysteriously abandoned after Starkiller. Hux wouldn’t complain, he’d hated that mask from the first day they’d met, but he has to admit that it helped to hide Ren’s rather infuriating tendency to emote at the worst possible times. Right now, for instance. Small mercy, he thinks, that Snoke can’t hear either of their thoughts. But before he can get any further down that hole of what he calls ‘administrative frustration,’ his attention is drawn back to the holoproj by Snoke’s next words. 

“Lord Ren, accompanied by a platoon of troopers, will mount the assault against the planet. General, you will cloak the  _ Finalizer _ while deploying that force, hiding its presence from the ranks of whatever resistance may be present. Remain in orbit, however, with fighters - only fighters, no more - at the ready if Ren requests assistance.” Against his own instincts, Hux opens his mouth to protest, but he immediately shuts it as Snoke holds up a finger that conveys his disapproval more than any word could. “I am sending you, General, for simple personnel support and not for an overt show of force. We cannot risk revealing too much of the true extent of our strength in this fight, in the event that Skywalker or another resistance cohort may be present.”

Master alarms are going off in Hux’s brain, complete with the flashing lights and the discordant sounds of klaxons layered upon klaxons. As much as he loathes giving up his  _ Finalizer _ , if they are meant to avoid an “overt show of force,” bringing its full complement seems completely opposite to the mission’s objects, not to mention a waste of their available resources. And it’s putting Ren in danger. For all the time Snoke seems to spend stirring things around in his brain, Ren really cannot seem to keep himself out of trouble, or even wield his stupid lightsaber to  _ get _ himself out of that trouble. Hux dimly remembers standing under the clean white lights of the medbay and shouting himself hoarse, railing at Ren for  _ fucking letting yourself get shot, again, it’s like you don’t even have that monstrosity of a weapon _ and then immediately being floored by Ren’s response, that he hadn’t had formal lightsaber training since he’d apprenticed with Skywalker. He’d walked out in shock and stood in the corridor for a full five minutes before he felt like he could open his eyes without wanting to first murder Ren for being an idiot and then take the  _ Finalizer _ blasting clear across the galaxy so he could shout at Snoke in person, instantaneous death notwithstanding. 

And when he’d finally, really thought about it the whole thing, Starkiller, Ren, the Ileenium system, the mindless pursuit of Skywalker, all of it had congealed into cold, hard doubt. Doubt of Snoke’s leadership, of his motivations, of the direction he was taking the Order in, and he’d talked it over with Ren, and then with Phasma, and then with Ren  _ and _ Phasma for good measure, and then just to top it all off he’d definitely not gotten drunk with his lieutenants and talked it over with  _ them _ , and they’d come to the consensus that no, Hux was not going insane, that there were indeed some serious issues brewing aboard the  _ Supremacy _ . 

And now, from theory to reality. Hux considers himself enough of an intelligent being to know good strategy from bad, and everything of what he’s just heard is emphatically  _ bad _ . 

Right then and there, standing at attention before the hologram of the Supreme Leader, Hux vows to himself that he will do whatever it takes to bring Ren home. The last time he’d blindly obeyed Snoke’s orders in the face of his own misgivings, Starkiller had died. Over a decade’s worth of requisition forms and bureaucratic wrangling and caf-filled, sleepless nights, lost in an instant. This time, he isn’t quite so intent on ignoring those warnings. Bad strategy is bad strategy, whether it comes from your vice-admiral or from the Supreme Leader himself. Especially when that Supreme Leader is more obsessed with the pursuit of one aging Jedi Master than the maintenance of his own Order. Somewhere in his brain Hux knows that what he's considering is nothing short of treason, but another part of him knows, somewhere deep down in his subconscious, that he's been toeing that line from the moment Starkiller's implosion imprinted itself onto his eyes.

He looks up, straight into Snoke’s scarred face, and wonders, not for the first time,  _ who are you? Where did you come from, and who gave you the right to rule? _ He doesn’t dare look over at Ren, doesn’t dare see whatever expression is being dimly illuminated by Snoke's holographic shadow, because even if he can't hear their thoughts he can definitely  _ see _ them standing before him, and it's already taken him an effort to keep his back straight and his expression guarded.

“You have your orders, General,” Snoke says, dismissal clear in every inch of his expression, and it takes every ounce of willpower in Hux to prevent himself from lashing out. He yearns to reach for Ren, whether to confirm his misgivings or to reassure himself he isn’t sure, but instead he bows, executes a perfect about-face, and stalks off down the causeway. The murmur of Ren’s voice follows him out into the corridor until the pneumatic hiss of the doors cuts it short. 

_ Kriffing stars, _ he thinks, heading for the conference room where he’s sent Caloma. He needs a plan B, for the moment when Snoke’s plan A crumbles, as Hux well knows it will if those rumours of a resistance movement are founded. 

There used to be a time when he would accept Snoke’s orders, think that at least he’s been granted the title he’d craved for so long, and ignore the niggling feeling that something wasn’t quite right. He never thought he’d be thinking otherwise, and especially not because of Kylo Ren. On the bad days, when Ren is being particularly infuriating or has torn up a corner of his ship or shouted at Mitaka again, Hux remembers the years he spent hating the man for being nothing short of a childish asshole. But the memory of Starkiller’s skin fragmenting into bright orange is difficult to forget, as is Ren’s bloodied form lying motionless in the snow, black blemish against red blood against greyscale, and after all of that he couldn’t find it in himself to hate him anymore. He was just another one of Snoke’s victims, another weapon for his cause. And somehow, somewhere in there, Hux found himself falling, and he never paused to look back. And now here he is, ready to stare Snoke in the eye and burn every bridge he needs to if he can keep Ren safe.

He types in his access code to the turbolifts and steps into the closest one, keying in the aft deck as his destination. As the lift starts sliding downwards he comms Mitaka to start on a requisition list for the four groups of troopers, fighters, and AT-STs, then Caloma to let her know he’s on his way, then Mikala to shift around a couple of his meetings to fit time into his schedule so he can write out orders for Phasma and the rest of his generals. And then one to Noravis for another cup of caf. He already knows he’s going to need it. 

He calculates quickly that even with the hyperdrive’s issues lengthening their travel time by almost 50 percent, he has less than 72 hours to get everything running the way it’s meant to. The way that’ll give them the best chance of success. He has to talk to Ren, and Phasma too, and figure out how they’re going to get themselves out of the hole that Snoke’s dug for them. But first, before he can do any of that, he’s got to draw up action orders, and send the  _ Finalizer _ jetting off towards the Outer Rim, and prepare a speech for final muster, and he knows he’ll have the barest moment to catch a breath only once the  _ Finalizer _ is in hyperspace, well on its way to Yelmir. 

Hux shuts off his comm, leans his head back against the wall of the lift, and closes his eyes. Stray blue sparkles scud across the blackness, and the headache throbs unpleasantly in his skull. Whatever Ren does to make his headaches better seems to have worn off since last night, and until Ren gets out of his audience with Snoke, Hux can’t get him to replace it. All he can do now is drink more caf, grit his teeth, and hope it doesn’t get too bad. The lift doors slide open to reveal Caloma with datapad in hand, and he takes a breath, settles his coat further over his shoulders, and gets on with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm on [tumblr](https://ethereallities.tumblr.com) (and there's one specifically for this fic [here](https://lydomc.tumblr.com)) so hmu if u want 
> 
> comments and kudos are the best things ever


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